


Other Children's Toys

by cupiscent



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-17
Updated: 2008-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memory is a funny thing, and being the High King is not quite like riding a bicycle, but Peter's never been good at hesitation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Other Children's Toys

**Author's Note:**

> A Peter exploration piece alongside the PC movie, with sprinklings of book details for fun.

There had been a day in England when they met for tea on the High Street. Well, the three of them had planned to, Lucy was still too young to come down into the town, and Edmund had detoured via the bookshop ("I'll be _five minutes_; don't eat all the scones.") so it had been just Peter and Susan sitting at the table in the window. He'd been in a sour mood for one reason or another and she had irregular verbs to memorise, her French text sitting beside her saucer as she muttered between sips of tea.

"Your accent's appalling," Peter said, sitting half sideways to the table and picking at a fray in the tablecloth's tatted hem.

She slammed the book closed with such force that the china rattled. "At least I'm _trying_," she snapped.

Peter sat up straighter. "What's that supposed to mean?"

But she just rolled her eyes and looked out the window, leaning on her elbow in a way that would make their mother, never mind her school mistresses, shriek. Peter was still glowering at her, so he saw when her mouth crept into an almost shy smile, and he followed her gaze out the window, transferring his glower to a boy in a boater and a school blazer; Douglas Thompson, one of Peter's _classmates_, no less. The smile trickled off the boy's face, and he scuttled away along the footpath. Peter watched him all the way down the street.

When he looked back, Su had her arms crossed and her eyebrows lifted. "What?" Peter demanded.

"Your type, is he?" she asked.

Peter frowned and opened his mouth, but he had no idea what to say, nor even where to start. Susan sniffed, and picked up her French text again, opening it in front of her face. She didn't say a word in English until Ed arrived.

*

Memory, Peter observed with sand between his toes and salt spray in his hair, was a funny thing.

You thought you remembered it all, everything you did during years of glorious (some might even say _magnificent_) reign, you clung to it so tightly in the darkest hours of the night (and the daylit ones as well, the hours when you doubted who you can be, who you _are_) and you repeated them like a litany or a fourteenth matinee viewing of a favourite film.

It wasn't until he breathed Narnian air that he realised how much more his lungs could hold; it was then that he realised that he'd been remembering it like a story, the dry facts, the bare words, the pencilled outlines of a whole world. A veil had been drawn back, a shroud ripped from furniture hidden away, and he _truly_ remembered.

He remembered the weight of the circlet upon his brow, pressing him to earth; he remembered the scent of ermine packed with lavendar to ward off moths; he remembered the ring in his ears of heralds' fanfares, and what a cheering crowd felt like.

He remembered he is the High King.

It wasn't quite as easy as that, however. Not quite 'back on a bicycle', or perhaps it was, and his uneasinesses, the fuzzy dips in his memories, were merely the equivalent of wobbles and swerves. Peter was sure - absolutely positive - that given sufficient time it would all come back as though they had never left in the first place, but Cair Paravel was in ruins and he couldn't help the feeling that there was a large rock in his metaphorical path.

Couldn't help the feeling that falling off this bicycle would have rather more severe consequences than skinned knees and the mockery of his siblings.

*

It had been the longest day of Peter's life - of any of his lives. Rowing all morning up the Glasswater he'd managed to convince himself that he hadn't changed, that he was still High King Peter the Magnificent. He remembered this land - remembered it perfectly; the sharpness of pine resin and the scream of the boar at bay and sleeping beneath the trees - but perhaps it didn't remember him any longer, and the possibility shook him more than he cared to admit.

And yet despite that, when they made camp that night he found sleep a long way off. It didn't particularly worry him; Narnian air had always been better than the best night's sleep. He lay on his back, one arm pillowed beneath his head, and watched the familiar stars. Beside him, Susan rolled over to face him with a sigh, and he didn't need to look to know she was awake.

"Do you think she saw him?" she asked, barely louder than the noises of the forest around them.

No need to ask who she meant. And he was afraid the answer should be yes, when it absolutely couldn't be because _why didn't Peter see him too_? "There is so much I want to ask him," Peter said, as quiet as Susan and far too quiet to contain all the burning desire he had to _know_. He didn't want her to ask - there were some things he couldn't even put into words for himself - so he asked quickly, "How long do you think we'll be here this time?"

She was silent for such a long time that he turned to look at her. Her hands were folded together under her cheek, her eyes shining in the dim firelight. "I couldn't bear," she said, "growing up again only to be forced back."

It's supposed to be, Peter supposed, a one-way street. A journey that humans were only supposed to take the once. "I know what you mean," he said.

From the way her eyes jumped to his face, Susan had almost forgotten he was there. "Well," she snapped as best a whisper could snap, as much his sister as a queen of Narnia, "maybe we didn't really grow up at all."

She rolled back over, away from him, before Peter could respond. Possibly for the best, because if they got into a fight now they'd just wake the others.

*

Two mornings later, Peter woke up and Lucy was gone. He rolled to a crouch, scabbarded sword in hand, and listened. The wind; a gust of birdsong; the clink of mail and a hoofbeat from the track that wound up the knoll they'd camped upon.

"Ed," Peter breathed, and his brother came awake at the lightest touch on his shoulder, all king and none of his burrowing-under-the-covers, five-more-minutes baby brother. "Stay with Susan and the DLF."

Edmund looked from the hilt of Peter's sword to his face, and nodded. Peter crept away towards the bluff overlooking the track, pressing his thumb against the guard of his sword to keep it from making a noise in the scabbard. He remembered the taste of morning mist over anticipation, the chill of dew-soaked armour, wrapping bridles with wool to stop them reflecting moonlight.

There was a minotaur climbing the path.

Peter flattened himself against the outcropping of the bluff, slipping around it on silent feet as he buckled on his swordbelt; chances were he'd need both hands for this. Lucy nearly gave it all away - not taken at all, just wandered off, and God he could _kill_ her, just not right now. Right now he shoved her down behind some bushes and assumed she'd have the sense to stay put as he stalked forward, eyes on the oblivious minotaur. He eased his sword silkily out of the scabbard, and the hilt fit his hand like perfection, like coming home, like a memory nestled inside his mind.

He was so focused he didn't see the swordsman until it was almost too late - _idiot!_ \- and nothing but muscle memory brought his guard up, meeting the attack and turning the other blade away. It was a boy (that was how Peter thought of them all, looking in the mirror and thinking _boy_) and he didn't fight badly, but more like a fencer than a soldier, too worried about swords and not thinking beyond the fight. Peter was very aware that the minotaur was still out there, but it wasn't until Lucy shouted and stayed his hand that Peter realised it was not alone.

Dozens of them. Surrounding him. _Narnians_.

The shock took him for a moment, the _memories_ of each of those faces and physiques, and when he turned back his own sword was facing him in the hand of the other. If situations had been reversed, Peter realised, Caspian (for that must be who this was) would be dead, cut down as he gawped.

In some ways, it seemed, Narnia was _not_ a more savage place.

*

Susan fell in beside him as they marched through the woods. Edmund was somewhere further back in the line, quizzing the badger about a millenium and more of history, and Lucy was probably doing something daft like making friends with the minotaurs. Peter glanced distractedly at Susan, and didn't slow his pace.

She had never had trouble keeping up with him, even with one hand employed in holding her skirts above the leaf mold underfoot. "You're not going to be difficult, are you?" she asked.

"What?" Peter asked, pushing thoughts of logistics aside for a moment.

Susan looked pointedly ahead, at the dark curls and armoured back of Prince Caspian. "You may have been a little abrupt."

Oh for... "We're not negotiating an alliance here," Peter said. "There are slightly more important things at stake than some princeling's _feelings_."

Susan glared at him, colour in her cheeks, but fortunately at that moment they neared the edge of the woods, and Peter hurried forward to see the lay of the land.

The How looked more like something in England than something in Narnia, overgrown and ancient and forgotten, but the welcome... _that_ Peter remembered.

He approached the How beneath the centaurs' bared blades with his siblings by his side. He looked sideways to catch Susan looking back at him; her lips twitched in the faintest of smiles, and her chin rose, her regality owing nothing to finery. Peter remembered grander homecomings: the scent of rose petals crushed underfoot, the cheer of a crowd like a physical force pressing against his limbs, four thrones in a row upon a raised dais. But this one was like dawn after the longest night. Peter felt it all again, in the gaze of the centaurs upon him - upon them. Recognition, and expectation, and duty.

It was so familiar he could have thought it was a part of himself, but so long lived without that he could cry for having it back. It settled across his shoulders like a mantle, like six feet of royal blue velvet trimmed with ermine.

He was High King Peter the Magnificent, and he would _die_ before he let his people down again.

*

The sun was setting, lancing through the upper galleries of the How and painting Caspian in fiery bars when Peter found him. The prince was muttering to himself as he systematically rechecked his arms and armour in preparation for tonight's raid, but just because Peter recognised the ritual didn't mean he was going to be squeamish about interrupting it.

"You've done well, you know," he said, and pretended not to notice that Caspian started, his head whipping about. Peter stepped into the gallery, squinting against the light until he was close enough to Caspian to be out of the direct sun. "You've united the Narnians into a common cause, and you've provisioned and quartered them."

Caspian didn't look any happier now than he had when Peter had talked over him at the war council. "But I shouldn't be trusted to lead them."

"That's not what I said," Peter said. He was trying his best to be (and sound) reasonable, but it wasn't hard at all to picture Edmund rolling his eyes and Susan... well, to say Susan had sent him up here would be a lie, because she had done nothing but catch his eye across the dissonant clangour of the main chamber and lift an eyebrow, but he knew just what she meant and it's why he's here.

Caspian took up his sword, passing the belt around his waist. "There can be only one king," he said, cinching the buckle tight. "My uncle taught me that, even if he taught me little else of worth."

"Rubbish," Peter said, and of this at least he was sure. "There are four of us, you know. And I could never have ruled Narnia without the others. I spent half my life stinking like a foundry with a sword in my hand and I probably would have spent the other half like that as well if not for Edmund ferreting out and squashing the potential beginnings of other wars. And neither of us would have had a kingdom to return to if not for Lucy just about knowing each and every one of our subjects personally and ensuring they all loved us to bits."

The light was thick and red by now, painting Caspian's profile in blood as the prince turned his head. "And Queen Susan?"

And Susan. Peter remembered her now, not as his sister, but as a queen; the heavy susurration of a gown the colour of the sunset, the feel of her arrow hissing past his ear, the besotted glint in a lordling's eye. Queen Susan, everywhere he could not be because he must be somewhere else; the stern implacability beside Lucy's gay promises; the thousand back-up plans to Edmund's grand design. "Queen Susan," he said, "made sure the kingdom _ran_, not just existed." But this was all rather beside the point. "Sometimes," Peter said, not giving Caspian a chance to say anything further about Susan, "being the king is about knowing what you can't do."

Caspian's eyebrows went up, along with one corner of his mouth. "Like navigate through the woods?" he offered.

Someone had been talking to Trumpkin. "Oh, ha ha," Peter drawled, but didn't let it deflect him. "Being king," he insisted, "is about finding the key that fits each particular lock." He offered a faint smile of his own before he added, "So let me get on with unlocking this one, will you?"

The last of the sun was dying outside. Caspian glanced towards it. "They will be waiting for us."

And on cue, from below rose his brother's voice. "Pete!"

"Right," Peter said.

Not twelve hours later, as the sun rose rather than falling and they returned in tatters rather than marching out with pride, he'd take it all back and say precisely the opposite. Peter had never been good at hesitating, but he meant all of it. _All_ of it, the good and the bad and everything else as well.

*

Even if he hadn't slept most of the day after trudging back to the How that morning, sleep that evening was a downright impossibility. Peter didn't even bother trying, knew that there would be nothing behind his eyelids but her black eyes, her white skin, her vicious red promises. No way of purging that nightmare but Aslan's breath upon his eyelids, and that had never seemed further from him.

He found Susan in an out of the way gallery, bowstring against her lips, drawing a bead upon a target at the far end. She loosed, the bow lolling in her suddenly eased grip, and the arrow thrummed in amongst its fellows, the bullseye occluded by red feathers. "What do you want?" she asked without turning.

_To be home_, Peter wanted to say, but he wasn't entirely sure if that meant Finchley or Narnia of old right now. So instead he said nothing, just followed her to the other end of the gallery where he helped her pull her arrows from the target, easing the heads out to avoid ripping holes in the covering.

When the quiver was full and the target bare, Susan said, "I nearly lost you to her once before." She pulled the quiver on, passing the strap over her head so the fletchings stood up above her shoulder. "I thought it was all over."

And Peter knew she was no longer talking about the White Witch. "What would you have me do?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted. "But Peter, we're supposed to be Aslan's chosen, and only one of us has seen him since we came back to his land."

As she turned and walked back to the head of the gallery, he stayed where he was, words tumbling through his head. _It's up to us now_ and _we've waited long enough_ and _I wasn't always_ but he'd tried them all before and they'd got him here, which was patently not far enough.

"Susan," he called, turning around.

At the other end of the gallery, she whirled in a flare of skirts and hair and snapped, "What?"

Peter didn't know how to ask, what to say to bring back the way things had been once-upon-a-time. How to remember to be the kings and queens of Narnia and not just the Pevensie children with crowns. The trick about riding a bicycle, really, was that you had to keep moving forwards, but he _couldn't_ do this alone. There had to be four of them, and he had to trust them, to know that they trusted him. That _she_ trusted him. Everyone else would come naturally if only she did.

He stepped in front of the target. Placed his back to the bullseye, his hands by his side, and lifted his chin.

Susan watched him for a long while, eyes black in the torchlight, before her chin lifted as well, her hand reaching over her shoulder for an arrow. She set it to the string and drew, her eyes upon his until they weren't, and in the next instant she loosed.

It didn't whistle; the fletching had always been perfect. It thudded into the target beside Peter's shoulder, and his heart beat again, and someone gasped.

Peter turned to see Caspian in the doorway, eyes wide and face pale. He tried to step forward, only to be jerked to a halt with the sound of linen tearing; he looked back in surprise to see the arrow had punched through his shirt, just the edge of it where it was too wide upon his boy's arm. He lifted a hand to it, but Susan's was already there, tugging the head free.

She stalked past Caspian, bow in one fist and arrow in the other, but at the doorway she looked back to meet Peter's eye before she turned into the corridor and disappeared. It was enough. More than enough.

"Are you mad?" Caspian was asking, too many shocks this night having leached the vigour from him like cheap dye from cloth. "Do you think your evening was not exciting enough?"

"Do you," Peter asked, stepping up to face him, "think you're really ready to be a king of Narnia?" But the night had sapped a lot from him as well, and there was no belligerence in the question, only curiosity. Peter looked upon Caspian and remembered how very young _he_ had been when first he fought for Narnia. He remembered the hammer of his heart the first time he'd drawn his sword to kill, the smell of blood and crushed grass turning his stomach, the terrifying weight of his crown upon his brow. He stood close to Caspian, and turned the prince's chin up with two fingers beneath it to look into his eyes, and remembered so very, very much.

Turning away, he said, "Try to get some sleep," and ignored the hypocrisy.

*

Actually, Peter hated all his memories of war. The smell of armour oil like a headache waiting to happen; the sour aftertaste of Lucy's cordial knitting the world back together; the blacksmith ring of clashing ironmongery. Peter had never thought well of those who enjoyed battle. He did it because it had to be done, and _because_ it had to be done and he had to do it, he had worked hard to do it well. There was a certain satisfaction to winning, but even then it was war; people died, the world turned onwards, and it wasn't supposed to be _fun_.

Some times even less fun than others.

They _didn't_ fight badly, these new Narnians and their new king, but more like revolutionaries than soldiers. They fought as though this was everything, the only thing, the only time, but Peter had lost count even before he returned to England and a haze was drawn over his past. He excused himself from the ebullience of the celebration to sit apart, on the shadowed fringes. It was not unpleasant to be alone, and surprising when Caspian joined him.

"They were my people too," Caspian said, with a defensive glower. "_Are_ my people too."

It was spoken as though he expected challenge, but Peter merely nodded, and shifted to make room, and passed him the flagon of wine.

Earlier, in the first flush of the realisation of victory, Caspian had hugged them all and Susan twice. He'd laughed in Peter's ear, in the relief of being alive still, and Peter had remembered the press of strong arms around him, the taste of another man's sweat, the gilding of candlelight on hard planes of muscle. Then Caspian was twirling Su around again and Peter had met Edmund's eyes and rolled his own and they had all laughed.

Later that night he leaned close over Caspian to pluck the near-empty flagon from the new king's slack hand, and when he drew back, shadow retreating, there was confusion in Caspian's eyes. He looked away, sitting up unsteadily, and Peter chuckled as he lifted the wineskin, thinking that there were many ways in which Narnia had changed.

*

They were borne through the city and up to the castle on a wave of adulation with a sharp edge to it. This wasn't a crowd that loved them because they were kings and queens or because they'd given a half holiday; this cheer was because they _won_, a recognition of the victor, though most people wouldn't even understand it like that. Beside Peter, Susan rode with a smile as gentle as ever, but she held her head high and proud, needing no crown nor blade for regality. Caspian glanced back as they rode into the castle, and looked thrilled but baffled. Buffetted.

The castle courtyard was lined with well-dressed courtiers. When Peter came around from dismounting, Caspian was handing Susan down from her horse, unnecessary but gallant. Peter came to stand beside him, gesturing towards the castle. The entrance was laid with crimson carpet, flanked by well-scrubbed pages with bannered trumpets and beribboned girls with baskets of rose petals. "Your majesty," Peter said, with a smile. "Lead the way."

Caspian let his hand fall from Susan's, took a breath, and stepped forward, alone, to the edge of the unrolled carpet. A great cheer went up from the crowd, and Peter held out his arm to his sister. Su hesitated, her eyes boring into his, before laying her hand atop his. They turned to follow Caspian up the carpet.

"Do you like him, then?" Susan asked, as they made their stately procession.

It was on the tip of Peter's tongue to protest that he'd never really _dis_liked Caspian, merely had differences of opinion, when he met his sister's gaze. Her face was very serious, and he remembered a day in England and irregular French verbs, and realised that was not at all what she was asking.

Su looked away, her chin lifting, and smiled at one of the petal-tossing girls, who blushed and nearly dropped her basket.

*

There was feasting, and fireworks, and a great deal of extremely fine wine, and dancing (of course). In the midst of it all it was hard not to remember other celebrations, other Narnian stars beneath which he had made merry, other nights and the uses he'd put them to. The gardens were raucous with an inept game of hide-and-seek that Peter strongly suspected had Lucy behind it, and in the great hall Susan's hand had not gone unclaimed for more than five minutes together. Peter found himself in the courtyard with Edmund on his shoulders, sparring with Wimbleweather the giant in the centre of an encouraging crowd. They would have won, too, if not for an unlucky swing and the edge of a flagstone beneath Peter's heel. A centaur caught Edmund, but Peter went sprawling on the red carpet that no one had bothered to put away.

As he lay laughing at the stars, a shadow loomed over him, bending down until it resolved into a familiar and not unwelcome face. A hand was extended; Peter took it, and let Caspian help him back to his feet. He shook hair out of his eyes, still breathless from exertion and delight, and looked at the other king. There was a faint smile on Caspian's face, their hands still clasped between them, and Peter realised how easy it could be. Like plucking a perfectly ripe plum from the tree, having it yield into your hand with the barest resistance.

How easy it had always been for the High King at the zenith of his golden glory.

Peter stepped back, letting his hand drop away from Caspian's. "What are you doing out here?" he said, smiling even as he dusted his trousers off. "Shouldn't you be in there dancing with Susan?"

Someone clapped Peter on the shoulder, saying he'd been hard done by, and by the time he turned back, Caspian had regained most of his composure. His smile was different now, but broader, and he said, "Do you approve, then?"

"Approve?" Peter repeated, and laughed. "I'm Su's brother, and sometimes her king, but I've never been her keeper."

*

Later that night - very late indeed, to be honest - Peter found Lucy asleep on a bench in the gardens, and carried her up to bed. She stirred when he lifted her, but was asleep again before she'd finished muttering that she wasn't a child, you know. She didn't even wake when he laid her down on the grand bed in the chamber she'd been given; she just rolled over and curled around the bolster. Faint sounds of singing drifted up from the gardens below, and Peter stood at the window for a moment, listening to the words of songs they'd almost forgotten and he remembered as though it had been yesterday.

He had barely opened the chamber door to leave when he realised there were voices murmuring in the corridor outside. He stopped, and peered out through the chink between door and frame.

It was Susan's chamber opposite, and Susan leaning against its door, with Caspian standing over her. As Peter watched, he ducked his head to kiss her again (for no one kissed like that at first, so deep and languorous and seriously). Su's fingers threaded through his dark hair, and she went up on tiptoes, Caspian's hands at her waist holding her close against him. He pushed her back, making the door knock against its hinges, and held her there as he dragged himself away, saying, "I should... I should go." He sounded as breathless as Peter had been after fighting a giant.

But Susan caught the front of his doublet with one hand, even as the other was fumbling behind her, finding the handle of the door. "No," she said, pulling him to her again. "No, you really shouldn't."

She got the door open and dragged him inside, closing it again on the glorious sound of her laughter.

*

The time came, like a long-expected visitor and no surprise at all. Peter had already realised that this was Narnia, and always would be, but perhaps it was no longer _his_ Narnia. He had already realised that being king, and especially the High King, is frequently about not getting what you want.

Susan turned away from Caspian, away from this whole world with which they were finished, but from which they would never be free. She stepped towards her brother with her chin up and her eyes alight and a smile beautiful upon her face.

Peter smiled back.


End file.
